Some issues with the new 5.4 build Conductivity talent.

As of the last ptr patch (when elem and enha dps was nerfed) the Conductivity talent was reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.

Currently i am experiencing 2 issues with this newly nerfed talent:

1. Before this patch, regardless of your Haste, Conductivity was always adding exactly 3 seconds of duration. However now for my shaman it adds 1.41 seconds (instead of 2) because of (i assume) my Haste.
In other words it seems that the more Haste you have, the less time your spells will be adding to your Healing Rain - which is just awful, since the added duration of Conductivity seems to be reducing through Haste much faster than your spells/attacks are sped up by Haste.

2. As Enhancement 2 seconds is just not nearly enough to maintain a Healing Rain - at best i was able to slightly prolong it before it expired, but it was definitely not nearly as long lasting as it is when Elemental/Resto use Conductivity.
Combined with the above fact that Conductivity now weakens the more haste you have, while Stormstrike's/Earthshock's cooldown is unaffected by haste, makes this talent even weaker than it already is.
Personally i think that if the Conductivity for Enha is left at 2 seconds (plus reduction through haste) it will not be enough to compete with the other 2 talents of that tier.
Overall these two changes to Conductivity made it a pretty much worthless talent for Elem/Enha compared to AG and Rushing Streams.

Since i just got back in the game, i'd like to pose a question regarding this talent.
The live version of this talent says that a heal makes HR 30% more powerful and a dmg attack makes it 50% more. I might be wording this wrong but do correct if so.
The PTR version changes the effect. The/dmg attack now increases the duration of HR.
So in my eyes the talent went from receiving a healing boost from a 2nd source to having it's duration increased by those same sources.
Question: Does the increased duration outweigh the previous effect?

The 5.3 conductivity was useful for soloing and sometimes in PvP - but some time ago blizzard released statistics that show Conductivity being used by only 1% of the total lvl90 shaman population (in USA i think).
So, in other words, anything that is not a used toilet paper sheet is better than the 5.3 Conductivity - at least as far as Raiding goes.

The new 5.4 PTR conductivity was kinda good until the last PTR patch where it started becoming weaker the more Haste you have, not to mention the reduction from 3 seconds to 2.

Overall at this PTR build, Conductivity is too weak to compare to AG/Rushing Streams for Elem/Enha as far as PvE goes.

Why would a 2 second added duration get reduced to 1.41 seconds? Is it possibly a bug, where the game client has an internal cap on the number of ticks that the talent can add, and than your haste is hitting that cap at 1.41 additional seconds?

As a test, have you tried taking off some haste pieces, and see if that 1.41 number changes?

Before this change, the talent was potentially viable for Resto, but only in Ra-Den/Ultraxion type situations where you can leave your Healing Rain in the same place for the entire fight. It's not viable at all for Resto at a 2 second extension. At 7613 haste, you have a 1.9 second cast time on Chain Heal. You also can't chain cast Chain Heal, because you need to use instant GCDs for at minimum dropping HST on cooldown and using Riptide at least frequently enough to have Chain Heal targets.

The instant casts you need to use will mean that you won't be able to keep HR up for the entire fight. Allowing you to do that was the only way the talent would be viable or competitive with Rushing Streams/Ancestral Guidance in even the 10% of situations it would have been viable for. As it stands now, the redesign of that talent is a complete failure, and I can't see it ever being used.

I personally would rather they just went back on it and made it like it used to be if just for soloing, because it sure as hell won't be used by any spec now in raiding or in dungeons. Why not just make it give healing rain a charge system or something that could be useful, hell, even broken OP, instead of "fixing" a talent by making it even less desirable :l

Maybe the haste should increase the amount added and it is just bugged at moment? Anyway I liked the live version better, will probably use Rushing Streams anyway

That part is obviously a bug. What it sounds like it's doing is rather than adding 2 seconds, it is adding an extra tick on HR. HR ticks every 2 seconds at 0 haste, so the more haste you have the less duration it is adding. There's no way that can be the intention.

I would only take this piece of shit talent if the 5.4 changes were ADDITIONS and not overhauls, to the live version. With how many CDs Resto has, I don't want to juggle yet another. This tier back to a no-brainer 90% of fights: RS... not that I'm unhappy with that :P

Rule of Thumb: If the healer's HPS is higher than your DPS, you're doing it wrong.

That part is obviously a bug. What it sounds like it's doing is rather than adding 2 seconds, it is adding an extra tick on HR. HR ticks every 2 seconds at 0 haste, so the more haste you have the less duration it is adding. There's no way that can be the intention.

I would like to believe that is true, but then again it is quite possible blizz intentionally tied Conductivity to provide a +1 tick per trigger.

Perhaps their idea was that Conductivity should extend HR by like 50% to perhaps a 100% - but not to cause an "endless" HR.

Either way the talent is pretty garbage right now, and even before these devastating nerfs it was kind of too "demanding" compared to the "fire and forget" RStreams and AG.

Really sad to see the live version of Conductivity go, only because of the solo'ing implications. I know they say only 1% of players is currently speccing into it, but that's probably what people log out with. I use the current Conductivity a lot, for 5 man's (don't really do Heroics anymore, but it's good for Challenge Modes, too), for Heroic Scenarios, for solo'ing difficult content, and a few other random uses here and there. Granted, this is all in Elemental spec, my OS, not Resto, my MS, but still.

I don't really see a problem with a talent that has no use, or very little use, in raiding, but has a wide range of uses in other areas. Raiding isn't the only area of the game, even if it's the one I care about the most.

The current incarnation of this talent is brilliant when it comes to soloing, CMs or healing HC 5mans as a dps. I will really be sad to see it go, especially given what's replacing it. Agreed about the haste thing being a bug though, I'd expect this will likely get sorted on the next ptr push otherwise it really is a complete waste of space for all three specs.

On the datamined PTR build, they have increased the duration of Conductivity per spell cast to 4 seconds with the same 40 second duration cap. For Resto, this puts the talent back to being a viable option on a theoretical Ra-Den style fight where you stay in one spot the entire fight. Outside of that, it's still useless.

On the datamined PTR build, they have increased the duration of Conductivity per spell cast to 4 seconds with the same 40 second duration cap. For Resto, this puts the talent back to being a viable option on a theoretical Ra-Den style fight where you stay in one spot the entire fight. Outside of that, it's still useless.

But that would fit to the Blizz's policy to "choose talents fight per fight basis", I guess... =/ Haven't been keeping myself up to date on 5.4 bosses if there even is a boss like that, but it might be the preferred choice then.

But that would fit to the Blizz's policy to "choose talents fight per fight basis", I guess... =/ Haven't been keeping myself up to date on 5.4 bosses if there even is a boss like that, but it might be the preferred choice then.

The problem is, there is only one fight this entire expansion (including SoO from the looks of it) in which Conductivity would be viable, and it obviously makes almost 0 sense in PvP. In in that case where it is viable, the other 2 talents perform just as well as it. That is way too situational of a use to warrant taking up a talent point for.

A good addition to the talent would be turning HR into an instant cast. It would fit the 'HR is always up' and 'QoL improvement' theme of the talent fairly well. It'd help with slow dance phases like on Durumu, simplify placing HR in a new spot while moving there and effectively reduce the CD of HR if you have to cast it back to back due to movement.